The Budweisers Should Make Up – And Cheers!

One of the globe’s most prolonged David-and-Goliath legal battles partially drew to a close Thursday when Europe’s highest court ruled that Anheuser-Busch InBev NV can’t register the Budweiser beer trademark across the entire European Union, giving an underdog Czech brewery a hoppy victory.

The court’s decision means that neither AB-InBev nor Czech state-owned brewer Budejovicky Budvar NP has universal European Union rights to the Budweiser trademark, and so the brewers will simply use the trademark on a country-by-country basis, with one or the other having rights to it in various jurisdictions.